An exploration in sociopathy

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Sure. It may take a while though. It’s a recovering from PTSD process. I don’t think there is any question that this searcher is in post traumatic shock. There is a lot to deal with: disappointment, betrayal, shock that such people exist. The fairy tale world of “everyone is a brother and sister underneath the skin” is gone forever. In addition there is often self disappointment and self betrayal.

The last two particularly if the victim betrayed individual(s) that he/she loved, in getting wrapped up in the con. Such victims are left bewildered by their own choices in the absence of the active con — they simply don’t know why they did what they did. They can spend years in a state of confusion and mourning — not able to understand their actions and emotionally keeping the flame alive of the relationship they destroyed, never emotionally letting go of the old flame.

Someone recovering from sociopathic victimization may be greatly helped by finding a talk therapist. However the therapist needs to understand the situation (and believe in sociopaths, therapists actually have less experience with sociopaths than the rest of us). This searcher does not need to discuss mom and dad and his/her childhood.

Changes necessary to find, remove bad leaders

The Army has a serious problem with toxic leaders. A new survey shows that soldiers rate 18 percent of their leaders as “bullies … tyrants … jerks” more interested in their own advancement than the welfare of the troops. A distinguished retired three-star, Lt. Gen. Walter Ulmer, estimated that roughly 8 percent to 12 percent of Army officers at the rank of colonel and higher “are so toxic that they need to be removed from command.”

That’s quite an indictment.

This problem, like so many others, is a byproduct of a decade of war that saw the force dedicated to developing combat skills, often at the expense of broader leadership abilities.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey [ . . .] wants leaders who earn the respect of subordinates and peers alike, rather than martinets and incompetents who hold authority only because they outrank everyone around them.

Such twisted chain of command is driving good troops out of the Army. So bad leaders not only are demoralizing, they are expensive.

The word isn’t toxic, it’s sociopathic. Give all officer candidates brain scans for possible sociopathy. I understand that the military makes a big effort to weed out sociopaths from the enlisted ranks, as they should (though some slip by: Steven Green who was discharged from the military “due to antisocial personality disorder but before the military was aware of the incident” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings)). They also need to take great care with their officers.

I am not saying that the majority of these “toxic” officers would be or have to be sociopathic. That is not necessary for sociopaths to do the harm they do, though the sociopathic percentage would be much higher than in the general population. My argument is that corruption, evil and the causes of human misery cannot be understood without taking sociopaths into account. Sociopathic mal-doers license, enable the non sociopathic corrupt and humiliated to emulate them. They are the sharp end of the stick in war crimes and bullying.

For the record I’d like to state that while I am antiwar, I am not anti-military. Thus while I would not allow military recruiters in public high schools beyond posters and occasional presentations, I would require all colleges that accept federal money to have ROTC programs. We want the officer class to reflect population in its diversity. To the voices from my Quaker pacifist past that ask wouldn’t you like a world with no need of militaries, I say, of course I would, and I’m sure it will happen exactly the same moment that water starts flowing uphill right before it turns into wine. If you want responsible, moral military leaders, such as those above, you cannot say to the officers corp don’t live in my neighborhood, don’t marry my daughters and expect an officer corp loyal to the people.

Meanwhile,

Israeli undercover agents boast of killing Palestinians on TV

Undercover Israeli intelligence officers appeared on national television Saturday to talk about assassinating Palestinians in a program broadcast on Israel’s Channel 10.

Oren Beaton presented a photo album of Palestinians he killed during his time as a commander of an undercover Israeli unit operating in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Beaton explained that he kept photos of his victims.

“This is a photo of a Palestinian young man called Basim Subeih who I killed. This is another young man. I shredded his body, and the photo shows the remnants of his body,” he said.

The TV program also featured an undercover agent referred to as “D”, who openly admitted killing “wanted Palestinians.”

He complained of suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and said that the state had rejected his demands for compensation.

NEWSFLASH TO THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: YOU ARE NOT BOUND BY ORDERS FROM SOCIOPATHIC OFFICERS. Its simple natural law, how can the soulless give orders to the souled? Some might ask what that would do for military discipline — but that’s the wrong question.

continuing,

The agents, who speak fluent Arabic, are shown surrounded by masked Palestinian collaborators secretly deployed to the area to protect them.The program provided previously unconfirmed details about the operational methods of undercover agents.

The report explained that officers conducted surveillance before an assassination, investigating the target’s friends and classmates.

Agents would even ask about the target’s favorite meals and habits at home, the report said.

In this way, agents would put together an image of the target’s behavior and routine.

Agent “D” said officers would then “seize the target and wait until the commander arrives to confirm his identity. Then we shoot him.”

So how do they pick these enemies of Israel? Are there dossiers of their actions against Israel or of their detailed realistic plans for harm? Or are they merely guilty of having intelligence, spirit and/or leadership qualities? Is it left up to the judgement of PTSD denying/damaged commanders? Is it left up to the judgement of commanders who had gone insane while killing women and children in Gaza all the while screaming NEVER AGAIN!? Israel claims the right to kill their enemies anywhere in the world. How do they select these targets?

I’m afraid that Agent “D” has the wrong idea of treatment for PTSD. It can not come from an outside medical intervention such as treatment for hemorrhoids or bacterial infection. His only route is a deeply personal journey to the depths of choice, responsibility, guilt, and sin. And what would motivate this journey? His own misery — which should not be diminished by psychiatric drugs.

However, if a PTSD sufferer is in such straits that he (or she) is afraid to drive across bridges because he may slam on the brakes and jump off the bridge, no matter who is in the car, then he (and his caregiver) has a decision to make of whether to take psychiatric pharmaceuticals of not. But basically, as far as I’m concerned, what psychiatric drugs do is to give time for “scar tissue of the soul” to form resulting in a lessened, less empathic person — which is not the aim.

The guilt ridden PTSD sufferer (PTSD is not the same as shell shock, but connected to the illegal, immoral wars since and including the Vietnam War and what that does to the war fighters) needs to make a journey of discovery to the truth. The past is not going to change, his superiors are not going to change, the change will be in him. He needs to mourn for failure, where he failed, to mourn for weakness, where he was weak, for impotence, where he was impotent (to affect events). This last also explains the PTSD of reporters and onsite diplomats. Those who witness crimes are also crime victims having been exposed to the betrayal of humanness, of the promise of humanity.

The PTSD sufferer will never go back to his previous life, that world is gone, but he will again be able to stride forward into the future with confidence and anticipation. The sad, troubling memories will indeed visit him for time to time but will no longer own him or keep him in thrall.

Does he need a therapist or “treatment” (which is totally the wrong word)? Yes and no. A “soul witness” therapist, who understands the task is to witness the PTSD sufferer’s own journey, would be very helpful. But a therapist who has no idea what that is would be worthless, actually worse than worthless.

Isn’t this a little backwards? Why not try to do something about psychopathic criminals rather than erase their tracks (not that it’s likely to work, IMO)? What’s the purpose here? To torture people for hours, get the desired information (the primitive and simplistic sociopathic mind just can’t get it that torture doesn’t work) and then erase the unpleasant memory from the victim’s mind? Don’t try to stop rape and murder rampages, but erase the survivors’ memories? Don’t stop sociopathic officers at checkpoints from ordering their men to fire on cars filled with families, just erase the shooters’ memories later?

Basically I’m with Startrek’s Captain Kirk:

“Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves! I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!”

This is just my gut feeling, but I’m not sure that sociopaths would even understand that view, they certainly wouldn’t care about others.

Also I believe that human nature is just too corrupt for this kind of power. It’s been only about 150 years since we had organized slavery in the U.S. Has human nature changed? Slavery still exists here and there in the world or even occasionally here in the United States (usually with illegal immigrants — of course, even if not overt, they essentially live in a state of economic slavery). Or look at corporations, they go overseas and revert to using child labor or near slavery conditions. Give corporations sociopathic freedoms and they will follow sociopathic dictates. Furthermore, otherwise decent (but weak) individuals will follow the companies’ interests and corrupt normals will continue to study at the feet of sociopaths for the secret of conscienceless corruption and evil. There’s been no progress when it comes to who we are.

The Spotless Mind’s Alain Brunet works at McGill University. That seems to ring a bell. . . . let’s see . . . McGill . . . memory erasing . . . depatterning . . . Ewen Cameron! Aha! McGill was famous as the home of Ewen Cameron’s depatterning experiments. He sought to take subjects (his fellow human beings) back to a white slate, erasing memories and even personalities through drugs, brainwashing and certain torture techniques. I don’t think he was exactly successful, though he did create a number of vegetables and otherwise damaged human beings. Being a monster psychopath, humans were no more than ants to him.

“McGill’s Psychiatry department was founded in 1943 by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron. Although Cameron continues to be a subject of controversy, there is no doubt that he was a great builder. In 1944, the Allan Memorial Institute opened. The site was Ravenscrag, a stately mansion located on the slopes of Mount Royal, which was renovated to house an institute of psychiatry.” Cameron then led both the Allan and the McGill department of psychiatry until 1963. [emphasis added.]

In 2006, Brian Palmer quoted a Marine officer as saying only 60 out of 1,000 deaths at Iraqi checkpoints were of “bad guys” (weapons or explosives were found in the vehicles later), the rest innocent victims.

“The corporal at Mojave Viper laid out a few more reasons why drivers don’t always stop. “Maybe his wife’s pregnant — he ‘s trying to get her to the hospital. That happens all the time. Maybe he’s just a fucking retard.” Marines make mistakes too, he allowed.”

Absolutely, such actions will leave the soldiers and Marines with PTSD (sociopathic soldiers/Marines and officers on the other hand won’t be affected in the slightest). However, it seems to me, that for memory erasure to work against PTSD, the memories would have to be erased almost instantly (or extremely shortly), before the event percolated through the different layers of the psyche. Children who have been abused or suffered a great loss (such as the death of a parent) under the age of three have no memory of it but it affects their lives profoundly. One way of putting it is that a child won’t remember the parent or the death but will remember the loss.

So will these soldiers have their memories wiped clean everyday, after every engagement, what? The movie Groundhog’s Day comes to mind. Do they think Americans raise their children for this?

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